"Momo listened to everyone and everything - even to the rain and the wind and the pine trees - and all of them spoke to her after their own fashion." -- Michael Ende
Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende (12 November 1929 — 28 August 1995) was a German writer of fantasy and children's literature. He was born in Garmisch (Bavaria, Germany), son of the surrealist painter Edgar Ende. He died in Filderstadt (Germany) of stomach cancer.
Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) is Ende's best known work. Other books include Momo and Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer (English title Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver). Michael Ende's works have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 20 million copies, and have been adapted into motion pictures, stage plays, operas and audio books.
Ende was one of the most popular and famous German authors of the 20th century, mostly due to the enormous success of his children's books. However, Ende was not strictly a children's author, as he also wrote books for adults. Ende claimed, "It is for this child in me, and in all of us, that I tell my stories," and that "[my books are] for any child between 80 and 8 years" (qtd. Senick 95, 97). Ende often found frustration in being perceived as exclusively an author for children, considering himself rather a man intending to speak of cultural problems and spiritual wisdom to people of all ages in his works; he wrote in 1985:
"One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about."
Ende's writing could be described as a surreal mixture of reality and fantasy. The reader is often invited to take a more interactive role in the story, and the worlds in his books often mirror our reality, using fantasy to bring light to the problems of an increasingly technological modern society. Not least of all because of having attended a Waldorf school as a child, his writings were influenced by anthroposophy. Ende was also known as a proponent of economic reform, and claimed to have had the concept of aging money in mind when writing Momo.
"All the beasts in Howling Forest were safe in their caves, nests, and burrows.""Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.""Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.""No architect troubled to design houses that suited people who were to live in them, because that would have meant building a whole range of different houses. It was far cheaper and, above all, timesaving to make them identical.""She became so important to them that they wondered how they had ever managed without her in the past. And the longer she stayed with them the more indispensable she became, so indispensable in fact that their one fear was that she might some day move on.""She would sit by herself in the middle of the old stoe amphitheatre, with the sky's starry vault overhead, and simply listen to the great silence around her.""Those who still think listening isn't an art should see if they can do it half as well.""Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart.""When it comes to controlling human beings, there is no better instrument than lies. Because you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts."
Ende was born November 12, 1929 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Bavaria, Germany). An only child, his parents were Edgar Ende, a surrealist painter, and Luise Bartholomä Ende, a physiotherapist (Coby 258). Since his artwork was banned by the Nazi party, Edgar Ende was forced to work in secret. In 1935, when he was six, the Ende family moved to the "artists' quarter of Schwabing" in Munich (Haase 55). Growing up in this rich artistic and literary environment influenced Ende’s later writing.
Ende attended the Maximillians Gymnasium until schools in Munich were closed due to bombings in 1943 (Colby 258). He resumed school at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. It was at this time that Ende first began to write stories ("Michael," par. 3). He aspired to be a "dramatist," but wrote mostly short stories and poems (Haase 55). In 1945, sixteen year old Ende was drafted into the German army, but deserted and joined an anti-Nazi group for the remainder of the war (Colby 258; “Michael,” par. 3).
After World War II, Ende decided that he wanted to be a playwright, but accepted a scholarship to study acting at the Otto-Falkenberg-Schauspielschule in Munich, since he could not afford to pay for college (Haase 55).
Michael Ende's works include:(Note — original titles are listed in German, followed by the English translation of the title in captions. Any translations of an entire work into English are listed.)
1960 - * Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer (Translated into English by Anthea Bell as Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver)
children's book
Overlook Press, 1990, ISBN 0-87951-391-8
Winner of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1961.
1962 - Jim Knopf und die Wilde 13 (Jim Button and the Wild 13)
children's book
1967 - Die Spielverderber (The Spoilsport)
play
1972 - Tranquilla Trampeltreu die beharrliche Schildkröte (1972)
children's book
1973 - Momo (1973) (Translated into English by Francis Lobb as The Grey Gentlemen, and by J. Maxwell Brownjohn as Momo.)
children's book - Ende wrote and illustrated
Viking Penguin Press, 1986, ISBN 0-14-009464-4
Winner of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1974.
1975 - "Das Kleine Lumpenkasperle"
children's book
1978 Das Traumfresserchen (Translated into English by Gwen Mars as The Dream Eater in 1978)
1978 - Lirum Larum Willi Warum: Eine lustige Unsinngeschichte für kleine Warumfrager
children's book
1979 - Die unendliche Geschichte: Von A bis Z (Translated into English by Ralph Manheim as The Neverending Story)
children's book
Amereon Ltd., 1979, ISBN 0-8488-1306-5
Buccaneer Books, 1991, ISBN 0-89966-807-0
Puffin Books, 1993, ISBN 0-14-038633-5
NAL/Dutton, 1997, ISBN 0-525-45758-5
1981 Der Lindwurm und der Schmetterling oder Der seltsame Tausch (1981)
children's book
1982 - Die zerstreute Brillenschlange
a play
1982 - Die Schattennähmaschine
children's book
1982 - Das Gauklermärchen (The Juggler's Tale)
a play
1982 - Written with Erhard Eppler and Hanne Tächl - Phantasie/Kultur/Politik: Protokoll eines Gesprächs (Fantasy/Culture/Politics: transcript of a conversation)
non-fiction
1982 - Die Ballade von Norbert Nackendick; oder das nackte Nashom
children's book
1984 - Norbert Nackendick; oder das nackte Nashom
children's book based on his play
1984 - Der Spiegel im Spiegel (1986)(Translated into English by J. Maxwell Brownjohn as Mirror in the Mirror: a labyrinth in 1986)
a collection of short stories for adults illustrated with Ende's father, Edgar Ende's engravings.
1984 - Filemon Faltenreich
children's book
1984 - Der Goggolori (1984)
wrote and illustrated
a play based on a Bavarian legend
1985 - Archäologie der Dunkelheit (Archaeology of Darkness)
nonfiction, about Edgar Ende and his work
1986 Trödelmarkt der Träume: Mitternachtslieder und leise Balladen (Midnight songs and quiet ballads)
collection of poetry and lyrics
1988 - Ophelias Schattentheater (Translated into English by Anthea Bell as Ophelia's Shadow Theater in 1989)
Overlook Press, 1989, ISBN 0-87951-371-3
1988 - Wrote the libretto for Die Jagd nach dem Schlarg
Opera adaptation of The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch (1989) (Translated into English by Heike Schwarzbauer and Rick Takvorian as The Night of Wishes: or, The Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion in 1992)
children's novel
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992, ISBN 0-374-19594-3
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995, ISBN 0-374-45503-1
1989 - Die Vollmondlegende (1989) (The Legend of the Full Moon)
1990 - Die Geschichte von der Schüssel und vom Löffel
children's book.
1992 - Das Gefängnis der Freiheit
adult short stories.
Weitbrecht Verlag, 1992, ISBN 3522708504
1992 - Der lange Weg nach Santa Cruz (The Long Road to Santa Cruz)
1993 - Der Teddy und die Tiere
children's book.
1993 - Wrote the libretto for the opera Der Rattenfänger: ein Hamelner Totentanz. Oper in elf Bildern
1998 - Der Niemandsgarten
fiction
Most of the above information was retrieved from the following sources:
Coby, Vineta, ed. "Michael Ende." World Authors 1980 - 1985. New York, New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1991. p. 259.
Haase, Donald P. "Michael Ende." Dictionary of Literary Biography: Contemporary German Fiction Writers, Second Series. Eds. Wolfgang D. Elfe and James Hardin. Vol 75. Detroit Michigan: Gale Research Inc, 1988. p. 55, 57.
"Michael Ende." Contemporary Authors Online. Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group. 2003. par. 16-17.